Effects of the Novel Flow Field Design on the DMFC Performance

Abstract

The effect of flow field plate designs on the performance of a single-cell direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) stack was investigated. Different from the regular serpentine flow field design in a square area, a novel variable length serpentine flow field in a circular area is designed. The two designs take the same channel width, channel depth, rib width and active area. Based on the experiments, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was developed and simulated to investigate the reasons for this change in performances between two designs. The CFD simulation showed that fuel distribution and the local current density distribution on the catalyst layer was more uniform for the variable length serpentine flow field. Furthermore, the generated current density from the DMFC with variable length serpentine flow field is also higher than the regular serpentine flow field.